What is Effective Technology?

We will be spending a lot of time taking a look at effective technology. I believe before we begin it is important that we take the time to define effective technology.

When I write about effective technology, I am referring to using technology, not because you can, but because it will enhance your lesson in dynamic ways. Teaching should never be static and technology provides multiple ways to avoid static teaching. Effective technology is all about making life easier in the classroom and keeping students engaged on a topic through interactive, fun, and educational activities.

In this blog, we will be sharing ideas for technology use in the classroom, review of apps for all grade levels and subjects, and share experiences of when technology fails...how you can have easy back-ups in place.

Finding Free Apps

AppShopper

There are plenty of good (and bad) apps out there that will have price reductions or perhaps even go free if you are patient enough. An app I use regularly is AppShopper. This app allowed me to search for apps I wanted and put them on a grocery list in which the app would tell me where an update was made or the price changed. I have gotten a lot of 5 - 10 dollar apps for free for just being patient. Sadly, the app has been removed from the apple store at this time, so if you have it already, then you are in luck. If you do not, my suggestion is to create an account on their website and watch the app prices via the website.

If you are looking for suitable apps that show apps that have gone free the best app I use daily is AppsGoneFree.

AppsGoneFree





Happy Savings! Patience is key for those big apps. The biggest trick I have learned about app shopping is that the creators usually have a pattern on sales, for example a Pacman app typically costs $2.99, but every other weekend it drops to $0.99 and you can track that from AppShopper either the app or your account.

3 Effective Technologies for the Classroom

Mission and Objective: This blog is dedicated to provide opportunities, suggestions, and ideas to help teachers, administrators, and anyone else that believes that effective technology use is key to reaching the new generation of students.

As a teacher myself (Middle School Math), I use technology to free me in the classroom. I use my iPad to teach from the back of the room or anywhere I would like to go. The app that I primarily use to annotate on my iPad to my projector is called SplashTop Whiteboard.

Solving a problem on the iPad, shows up on the board

SplashTop Whiteboard



Splashtop allows the user to sync their iPad to their computer (or any computer that is logged in through  g-mail.) Every once in a while I leave the file I need on my home computer and in an instant I can log into my computer from school to home and drag the file into dropbox. All of a sudden I can now reach my file from my school computer.

Turning Point Clickers

Along with using the iPad to go over notes, I use clickers to assess students with a pre and post test for each chapter. I also create a few questions that go with each set of notes and I can do an instant quick check to see if students are learning.


Clickers provides a lot of feedback in a moments time, which is amazing, depending on what program, it will also spit out a lot of useful data to help you track your students growth. Anyone not using this technology should really consider giving these a try. The initial setup can be a little stressful, but the rewards afterwards pay off that stress extremely fast.




The last effective strategy I will be sharing today is the use of apps. There are some amazing apps out there for math, but I find it hard to find
engaging math apps that go over the topics discussed in middle school math, including Pythagorean theorem, graphing, algebra, and geometry. I have dedicated the last half of a year creating my very own math app called WileD Math.

WileD Math

This app is designed for students to try those challenging problems and afterwards, the students can spend credits to play the fun little mini-games where the objective is to earn the highest score possible.

I consider this app an effective use of technology because I can have half of my students working on problems we learned in class and the other half can spend some time one on one with myself, where I can really focus on their math skills or spend time developing a new, more complex skill. The app provides breakdown on student results, which means I can take it out of a grade if I wanted to. Every question on the app is self generating, which means their is an unlimited amount of questions that can occur. Problems are written in multiple ways and the app is currently expanding and meeting needs in all areas.




In short, technology is the way of the generation of students we are having. It is time for teachers to begin adopting effective technology in the room to promote critical thinking and higher levels of engagement. Technology by itself is not beneficial in the classroom, rather technology used in conjunction with sound lessons where the technology provides perks including instant feedback, higher levels of engagement, interactions, or a combination of everything.